


Count ’Em

by standalone



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amis to Lovers, Artist Grantaire, Ill-defined Activist Enjolras, M/M, Montparnasse Being an Asshole, Past Enjolras/Montparnasse, Post-Break Up, musical inspiration from Dua Lipa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 02:43:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12245505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: Getting back together. With Montparnasse. He knows it’s stupid. He knows Montparnasse only wants to get up on him this once and leave him again. And he knows Montparnasse is a piece of shit. Objectively, yes, heknowsthis.“He... Goddamn. He makes me feel like, like...”Grantaire’s eyes don’t leave him. “Like nobody else.”Enjolras can only nod. Grantaire gets it.





	Count ’Em

**Author's Note:**

  * For [werebear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/werebear/gifts), [Pigsinspaaace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigsinspaaace/gifts).



> Inspired by my number one jam of the summer, Dua Lipa’s delightful [“New Rules.”](https://youtu.be/k2qgadSvNyU)
> 
> You should probably listen to it right now.

**ONE**

“Don’t pick up that phone,” Musichetta admonishes.

“But—” 

Courf chimes in. “You know he’s only calling ’cause he’s drunk.”

“And alone,” says Jehan, who probably stuffs all his many pockets with sympathy, since he can dig it out at a moment’s notice. “No one’s seen him around lately.”

The phone’s still ringing in Enjolras’s hand. He stares at it glumly. _Montparnasse_ , it says, and there’s that picture of him, just waking up and caught off-guard, eyes bright and brows for once unarched. Montparnasse hated it, but to Enjolras it was beautiful and rare. No one else could get this photo. No one else could make Montparnasse let down his defenses like this. 

The ringing stops, and the display shifts to say _Missed Call: Montparnasse_. Then it starts ringing again. 

“I should really—” Enjolras says, about to press his thumb to the screen to unlock Montparnasse’s frozen face, to hear that silky voice slip sultry into his ear.

“Nope.” Even though Combeferre, at his side, hasn’t lifted his eyes from the busy scroll of newsfeeds on his laptop screen, his hand reaches to wrap around the phone. 

“Just to say—” 

“You already tried,” ’Ferre says. He says it like he says everything, calm and logical, and this is not at all what Enjolras wants. Calm logic cannot oppose his conversing with Montparnasse, because that leaves him to conclude that his broken relationship broke for good reason, and that the wild raptures of their time together were always always doomed. “Let yourselves move on.”

When the phone goes quiet again, Musichetta slides Enjolras a shot. 

A text pings.

 **Montparnasse:** Enj. This party’s bangin. Thinking about you

“Hell no,” Courf says, pulling the phone out of his hand. “No way you text him back.”

“Who?” Grantaire asks. He’s apparently joined them.

“Montparnasse,” Courf says, in the tone you might use to name bedbugs. 

“ _That_ guy,” Grantaire says, in uncharacteristic monosyllables. He glances from morose Enjolras to the rest of the friends gathered at the bar. “Yep. Gotcha.” 

*

**TWO**

“Why the fuck did you invite him in?” hisses Courf a few days later. They’re in the kitchen, where he dragged Enjolras the second he saw Enjolras offering Montparnasse a drink in the foyer. It’s true that Montparnasse had already rested an arm over Enjolras’s shoulder, and was leaning significantly closer to his face than was perhaps strictly necessary for such an interaction.

“It’s—we’re having a _party_ ,” Enjolras protests. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You could, I don’t know, say, _You fucking dumped me, asshole, get off my doormat_.”

“Well, he didn’t exactly... and what would our friends say? Bahorel’s here. Eponine. Grantaire. You want me to say he can’t come in?”

“Yes,” Courf says, like this is an obvious and easy conclusion. “ _You broke my heart. Leave._ ”

The thought makes Enjolras wilt inside. “I couldn’t.”

“Want me to?”

“No!” He grabs at Courfeyrac, who has turned away as if to leave the kitchen. “Don’t!”

“No worries. I’m not gonna kick him out for you, Enj. That’s your job.” He lifts a dish of olives from a counter. “Put these out?”

Enjolras ends up carrying the olives for a good long while. It helps to have a job, even a job you’ve invented for yourself, when you’re not sure what else to do. He circulates through the house offering olives to amused but mostly appreciative guests, and makes a mental note that he needs to do a follow-up run with drinks—too many glasses are running low.

But the back porch, where the auxiliary cooler holds icy bottles of white wine and a couple growlers of local wheat beer, turns out to be occupied. Montparnasse and Eponine are leaning on the precarious old railing sharing a blunt in companionable vulgarity.

“You chasing down the fucking leads or what?”

“Working on it,” Montparnasse says, spitting over the edge. “That your fucking business?”

“It’s all my business, shitbag,” Eponine says, smirking around a mouthful of smoke. “Gotta keep the supply lines clear.” Then she notices Enjolras behind them. “Looking for ’Parnasse?”

Montparnasse cocks his head back to see who’s there. 

“Ennnnj,” he says, slow and low and rolling in that way that just gets right down into Enjolras’s guts. “Get over here, you.”

Enjolras is a grown-ass human being. He gets that this is a gross way to talk to people. He gets that Montparnasse is no good. So why does he go over there? 

Because the hand that settles on his lower back is good enough to make up for anything. 

“You good, man?” In the dark night, Montparnasse’s eyes are darker, and focused as they are on Enjolras, Enjolras can almost convince himself that that’s real concern he sees there, pulling him back in. Almost. 

“I’m just getting some wine,” he says, ducking away from that hand to open the cooler. Hands full of bottles, he hurries back inside. 

In the overstuffed living room, there’s an embarrassingly awful singing game underway.

“ _... I feel like Pablo when I'm workin' on my house/Tell 'em party's in here, we don't need to go out!_ ” Cosette screeches out her last line, ashamed, and buries her red face momentarily in a couch cushion, coming up only to say, “Go, Bahorel.”

He swigs from his beer, then more bellows than sings out. “ _Hands up, playing my song, know it’s gonna be okay/Yeah, yeah, yeah-ah-ah, it’s a party in the USA._ ” 

He calls out Musichetta, who sings from, “Party Rock,” to the universal revulsion of her jeering audience. “Fuck all y’all,” Musichetta laughs. “You’re up, Enjolras.”

Enjolras is not in, no way, but fortunately Grantaire, from the corner where he’s claimed a nice chunk of space atop what is technically Enjolras’s desk, waves an empty glass. “Beer me, and I’ll go for you.”

He takes the full growler Enjolras holds out. “ _It’s my party_ ,” he sings, and, through the usual rasp of it, his voice is far more tuneful than you might expect, “ _and I’ll cry if I want to_.” He shrugs theatrically to the room’s hoots. “ _You would cry too if it happened to you_. Prouvaire.” To Enjolras, he says, “Come on up. Room for two.” When he sees Enjolras hesitating, he says, “You’re not gonna make me drink this whole thing myself.”

With a silent word of contrition to the god of desks, Enjolras clambers up beside Grantaire, who immediately passes him the open jug of beer.

“So, what, the great orator doesn’t sing?”

“What?” glugs Enjolras, having taken in rather an unmodulated mouthful. Grantaire relieves him of the bottle.

“Or is it just that you don’t know the songs of the normal people? No room in that questing noggin of yours for music that’s not Of the Struggle? The Wobblies didn’t sing about partying down?”

“Shut up,” Enjolras laughs. “I know songs. I know song words.”

“A powerful defense that is definitely not what a high-minded activist whose entire playlist is political podcasts would say,” Grantaire says, while Floreal screams, “ _You gotta fight! for your right! to paaarrty!_ ” “Definitely not.”

“Give me that.” Enjolras grabs back the growler and chokes down another surprisingly-large gulp.

By god, it’s fun. He and Grantaire have never been close, in the couple of years they’ve known each other. Truth be told, for the most part, their interactions have been rooted in quarreling, since they both of them are in possession of strong views and unyielding dispositions. On more than one occasion, Enjolras has hurled at Grantaire the accusation that his only actual belief is that Enjolras needs to be brought down a peg, but he knows it’s not really true. Grantaire’s beliefs are nuanced—when it comes to the human spirit, he is less inclined to generosity than is Enjolras, but he is far from blind to suffering, and, unlike almost everyone Enjolras knows, seems to believe that if Enjolras is ever going to be able to make things better, someone needs to corner him and make him fucking defend himself.

So it’s a rare and new treat to sit elbow-to-elbow with him and just talk shit. He sees Grantaire goof around with Bahorel and Courfeyrac and, more wryly, with Eponine, but their own conversations so often seem to weigh too much to admit humor.

Enjolras manages to ask, even, about Grantaire’s upcoming show, and learns that actually it’s just a few nights off. “You into that shit?” Grantaire asks dubiously. He’s notoriously tightlipped about his painting. His face that looks hard-edged from the other side of an argument, up close, like this, looks at once defeated and undaunted. He looks like a person who looks for answers he doesn’t believe he’ll ever find. 

“Sure,” Enjolras says. Maybe he’ll go. He’s only seen a smattering of Grantaire’s art, and that mostly in promo-print reproductions. “I’m not sure what’s happening then.”

“Cool.” Grantaire nods noncommittally. 

The game word seems to have changed. Jehan is singing, to general delight, “ _I kissed a girl! and I_...”

Grantaire shoves off the desk. “Back in a mo,” he says, pausing on his path to the bathroom to kiss a singing Jehan sloppily on the cheek. Jehan pretends he’s blushing, but, being Jehan, is also obviously blushing, even in this dim light.

Enjolras is surprised at his own enchantment with the scene. The large quantity of beer he’s consumed while sitting here hasn’t hurt, he supposes, but also, there’s something wonderful about seeing people you think you know from a new, more welcoming angle.

“Tell me the truth,” Montparnasse’s voice, suddenly at his ear, is so soft, so tender. “You miss us.”

Enjolras straightens up. 

Before him, lit by the rosy glow of the room, the haughty points and lines of Montparnasse are perfect. 

His mouth wants to say _yes_ , because of course yes. Of course he misses Montparnasse. Of course despite the manifold shitty mundane indignities of dating a cheating, manipulative human wreck, he misses that wreck because disaster awakens something in him. Some part of him wants to want the unhaveable.

Montparnasse saves him the trouble of answering. His lips find Enjolras’s cheek, and even through the fug of party smells, the scent of Montparnasse is unmistakable. Enjolras feels, for one brief, disjointed moment, like he’s home.

Then Montparnasse is breaking away. Grantaire’s back, beside them, and looking with a grim sort of curiosity between the two. “This guy bothering you?” he asks, grinning, to both and neither of them. 

“I hear you’re opening at 321 next week,” Montparnasse says to Grantaire. He is so good at the art of insinuation. God knows how he knows what he knows, but he always manages to make it feel like he just learned it now, in this conversation, from someone whose opinion you care about. 

“Yeah? You gonna be there?” 

Courfeyrac comes in then and, seeing Montparnasse still in attendance, and with his hand curled controllingly around Enjolras’s arm at that, makes some crude and unsubtle gestures at Enjolras. _Get him gone_.

Grantaire, being at Enjolras’s side, must also see. 

“Hey,” Enjolras says to Montparnasse. It’s hard, because that hand on his arm feels so good. It feels like it fits there, but Courf across the room and, oddly, Grantaire at his side make him struggle to think better of it. “I think you should go.”

“Do you really,” Montparnasse drawls, cutting his eyes around the room at whoever might have stuck such a prop into Enjolras’s weak will. He kisses Enjolras on the lips, just once but by the end of it, nothing else in this room seems of comparable importance to the seductions implicit therein.

“Man,” Grantaire says abruptly to Montparnasse, when Montparnasse pulls away. “You’re bouncing to Claquesous’s with me, right? Sounds like they got the real shit there.”

He doesn’t wink at Enjolras as he steers Montparnasse to the door, but there was something like a wink in the way he jostled against Enjolras when he reached past him for his jacket on the desk, just before. Not like he thinks he knows what’s best for Enjolras, but like Enjolras has enlisted him to save him from himself.

*

**THREE**

“We’re just, well. It’s not a thing. We just talked, that’s all. And I’m going to the show.”

“Because you’re not over him.”

“Because of Grantaire! He matters to me. He’s our friend.”

Combeferre’s shaking his head. “Are you going there for R, or for _him_?”

“It’s fine. So what if he’s there? We’re not... _We_ can be friends.”

Combeferre’s is not an ugly laugh, but in this moment, it strikes Enjolras as deeply unpleasant.

“Why the hell not?”

“You want to move on?”

Enjolras flushes. “I want to be _happy_.”

“Not an answer.”

The show is in a tiny gallery, very long but so narrow that the works are staggered so that a person can stand against one of the two long walls, between two paintings, since that’s the only way to gain adequate distance to take in a painting on the opposite wall in its entirety. Small circular tables dotted down the length of the gallery hold cheese and figs and Marcona almonds; at the far end, a bartender pours wine.

Enjolras is hoping to slide behind Grantaire, who’s engaged in vigorous debate with a patron, and get down to the drinks table before he has to carry on any kind of conversation, but this is not to be. Grantaire gesticulates at exactly the moment of the pass, and there’s not enough room for Enjolras to dodge unless he’s going to knock a painting off the wall in the process, which thank god he manages not to do. But Grantaire turns to apologize for the smack, and sees it’s Enjolras and just stops.

“You came.” His smile is too broad—a smile layered over uncertainty, which seems at odds with his appearance. He’s shockingly elegant. With the usual desperate curls slicked tidily down, swarthy face freshly shaved, and a vintage suit that fits him like it’s bespoke, surrounded by artistic and human evidence of his own achievements, this Grantaire seems like a person who’d hesitate at nothing.

So it’s strange, Enjolras thinks, that he seems anxious, in a way that slumped, snide hoodie-and-jeans Grantaire never lets on.

“Yeah, I haven’t gotten to look much yet.” He looks down the long hall, milling with people. There are a _lot_ of people here, blending into the giant riots of color that are the paintings, like the crowds of brushstroked protesters are tumbling out of the canvas into this space. “Are they all of demonstrations?”

“Mostly,” Grantaire says. He excuses himself from his conversation partner. “It’s kind of the theme.”

Enjolras recalls, belatedly, that the sign at the entrance announces the show as _The People_. “Wow,” he says, bending near one of the paintings to take in the details. In a massive green-and-gray crush of humans bristling with protest signs, there are little pockets where the crowd breaks open enough to show individuals. In one, a toddler sits in stony, exhausted rage while parents bend over trying in apparent futility to coax the child back to its feet. In another, a few bright daubs of paint show that two protesters, attention drawn down the two different streets in whose intersection they march, are gripping each other’s hands like they have everything to lose.

Painting after painting, the details continue to emerge and surprise him. The stories they tell are unsettling: they show multitudes of people in shared struggle, Enjolras wants to say, but clearly, every struggle is itself different, layered. It is deeply observant and deeply human. 

“Fuck,” he says under his breath. On top of all that, it just looks gorgeous. Highly marketable, he hopes, for Grantaire’s sake, but also kind of hopes not, because he is not a monied art buyer, and he wants this. “I want them all.”

“This one’s Moscow,” Grantaire says after a minute. “Over there was La Paz. You want to see one _you_ were at, you should...”

“There you are.” The voice just behind him is low and slippery, rolling alluring and mysterious as mercury, and Enjolras cannot resist. He lets himself lean backward; the grip of a hand on his shoulder tells him he’s not going to fall. Sure enough, a second hand takes his hip, and hell, the smooth lips reach his throat at the same moment as Montparnasse’s smell reaches his nose: strong, sharp smoke and a thorough drenching of sharper aftershave. It’s excessive and gauche, certainly nothing like refined, but in its classlessness, there’s a magnetic bravado. Everything Montparnasse is bellows _I am king; what I touch is mine_. From just this moment’s encounter, Enjolras will be smelling Montparnasse on his skin all night. And _that_ —his useless brain reminds him—assumes the night’s encounters end here. The hand curving over Enjolras’s hipbone slides forward and down into the pocket of his jeans. Montparnasse murmurs, “I’ve been looking for you.”

In front of them, Grantaire’s turned away to kill his glass of wine, which he hands off roughly to a passing caterer. “You made it,” he says. 

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Montparnasse assures. _Yes, you would_ , some small objection sounds from a distant corner of Enjolras’s mind, but he doesn’t care to investigate. Not with Montparnasse snug against his back, his fingertips pressing Enjolras’s leg through the thin lining of the pocket.

“Never took you for a patron of the arts.”

Montparnasse’s laugh rings bell-like and clear. “People change.”

Grantaire turns away to field the questions of a small group of sixty-somethings, and Enjolras turns to kiss Montparnasse properly.

He’s forgotten that Montparnasse doesn’t care to be kissed in public, if at all. Not if he’s not the one making the move. When Enjolras moves toward him, he tilts his head away. “You want to get us a drink?” he says. 

Without Grantaire at his side, the paintings are still magnificent. He stands as far as he can, pressed to the wall on the other side and trying not to get irritated at the constant stream of people invading his line of sight, then realizes anew that they blend in, and that this gallery is actually maybe the perfect place for these pictures, and that of course this must have been intentional, and feels dumb for having not thought through the very obvious fact that artists must actually plan the aesthetic presentation of their work. 

He gets as close as he can so that he can see each individual stroke of paint on the canvas, long and streaky punctuated by frantic tight clusters of daubed pigment. He wonders what it looks like to paint this, what it feels like. Can you make such marks calmly?

Montparnasse, who keeps the wine coming for both of them, has little patience for the looking, and loiters by a cheese plate till he can take no more. His long fingers slip tight around Enjolras’s. “My place?” he asks.

All these bodies around him, real and painted, have stirred Enjolras’s blood. He wants to be part of things, to be part of everything, to understand the smaller stories and not just the unifying ones that are _his_ stories, the stories that are the ostensible reason for each massive demonstration. He wants to belong, here in the many; and also he wants to get fucked.

In the moment, these are not compatible desires. 

He lets Montparnasse lead him toward the entrance.

“Wait!” Grantaire’s churning toward them, through the sea of people who crowd in around him. His eyes are on Enjolras. “You promised me that thing.” Enjolras looks at him in confusion. Grantaire knocks his knuckles against Montparnasse’s upper arm. “You can wait a sec, right?” Grantaire says, with the authority of a man who knows Montparnasse never really needs to be anywhere, and grabs Enjolras firmly by the wrist. “C’mere.”

It’s a long and strange hustle back down the length of the room, Enjolras dragged and confused. At the back, near the drinks table, there’s the door for the bathroom and a second that turns out to hold a small office that’s currently operating as the caterers’ staging area. 

Inside this, a caterer is stacking empty cheese trays while another distributes macarons and strawberries across several tiered platters. 

“Sorry,” Grantaire says, shoving Enjolras through the door and following him in, “but can we get a minute?”

“No problem,” says the server with the berries, placing the bowl carefully on a spare bit of counter. Apparently accustomed to being displaced, the other caterer has already swept out of the room.

Grantaire shuts the door behind them. He leans his back against it. He crosses his arms over his ribs, and lets his head hang so that he’s looking at Enjolras through the swoop of curls that’s fallen across his forehead. The slicked-down look couldn’t survive that jostled rush through so many people. His hair’s sprung loose in every direction, and it occurs to Enjolras that actually, Grantaire looks even better like _this_ , like himself, disheveled and intense even in his finery, than he did when he was perfectly coiffed and polished.

“What?” Enjolras asks. He is very, very confused. Seconds ago, he was on his way to getting out of here, to getting to leave with _Montparnasse_ , to getting together with...

“You really want this?”

Getting back together. With Montparnasse. Oh, fuck. He knows. He knows it’s stupid. He knows Montparnasse only wants to get up on him this once and leave him again. And he knows Montparnasse is a piece of shit. Objectively, yes, he _knows_ this.

“I never learn.”

“Looking for excuses?” It’s a legitimate question, not a challenge—which of course means it’s actually an even bigger challenge. _Is_ he? Is he going to let himself off the hook by pretending there’s no way out but deeper in?

“He... Goddamn. He makes me feel like, like...”

Grantaire’s eyes don’t leave him. “Like nobody else.”

Enjolras can only nod. Grantaire gets it.

“So, you wanna?”

The weight of this question is too great to bear while standing alone at the center of this strange confectionery-packed little room. Enjolras sits heavily on the floor and rakes his hands backward through his hair. “Yes. Yeah, I want to. But I shouldn’t. He doesn’t...”

His phone buzzes with a text.

 **Montparnasse:** We doing this?

Enjolras looks up from the screen to see that Grantaire’s watching him intently.

“You gonna text him back?”

There are so many things he could say. He can picture Montparnasse now, slouched tipsily against the wall out front with more attention for the cigarette in his right hand than the quick texts he’s fumbling out with his left. Surely there are more texts. Montparnasse always has pots bubbling on the back burners, always just barely gets that phone slid back into the pocket before he’s reaching to kiss you.

In his head, he hears his friends. Don’t pick up. Don’t let him in. Don’t. And he tells himself no.

“No,” he says, and he knows his eyes are full of fucking anguish, so maybe he kind of glowers at Grantaire while he says it, but Grantaire just inclines his head in polite surprise. 

“ _No_ , as in...”

He answers vehemently. “I’m done.”

Grantaire lifts an eyebrow. It’s a move that usually looks snide on him. It’s condescending. But right now, it feels a thousand times better than his friends’ congratulations might. It’s also, the ferocious little corner of his brain that’s trying to get laid tonight notices, very very hot.

Enjolras wonders why he hasn’t paid more attention to the heat of Grantaire’s sneers 

“Want me to tell him for you?” Enjolras is grateful that Grantaire doesn’t outright accuse him of lacking the fortitude to turn his back after a face-to-face encounter with Montparnasse, but he can’t help but worry. Montparnasse is no stranger to confrontation, and doesn’t take kindly to rejection. He doesn’t want to get Grantaire on Montparnasse’s bad side. 

This, too, though, Grantaire has anticipated. “I could say you just horked all over the back room, see if he wants to take you home.”

It’s a genius move: he won’t. This Enjolras knows immediately, before he says “Okay,” before Grantaire steps out of the room, letting the latch click shut again to leave him alone a minute with his thoughts, before Grantaire returns minutes later to nod the silent confirmation that yeah, Montparnasse beat it the second tonight’s Enjolras stopped sounding like an easy fuck and started sounding like a responsibility.

Enjolras nods back. He’s not quite sure what to feel. Shouldn’t this feel triumphant, like closure? 

“I can’t believe you didn’t eat any of these,” Grantaire says, gazing around at the almost-ready trays of sweets. He grabs up a handful of jewel-colored cookies and offers them to Enjolras. “Have some.” Enjolras chooses a yellow-and-gold one. It shatters under his teeth into delicate shards of crisp almond and rich lemon custard.

Grantaire eats a pink one.

“So,” he says, “whadd’ya want to do?” It occurs to Enjolras that he is monopolizing Grantaire’s time and attention, denying the other gallery visitors the pleasures thereof, and also of all the desserts. “I can call you a ride if you want.”

Enjolras tries to think it over quickly. He really does feel bad, even in this deep well of confusion and self-disgust, about taking up so much of Grantaire’s time. But Grantaire doesn’t seem like he’s in any kind of hurry. His hand’s on the doorknob again, but it seems like it’s there to keep people out, not in eagerness to flee Enjolras’s miserable company.

Enjolras gestures for Grantaire to hand him one of the macarons he still holds, this one mint green with white cream. Grantaire snorts out a little chuckle at Enjolras’s contemplation of the cookie.

“You deserve cookies,” Grantaire says.

“Honestly?” Enjolras says, “I kind of just want to get wasted.”

This provokes a full, resonating laugh. “I can help you with that,” Grantaire says.

True to his word, once he’s checked that the coast is clear, Grantaire reappears with a couple of glasses of red wine. “I have to go talk to some people,” he says apologetically.

“That’s cool,” Enjolras says, taking a glass. “I’m just here for the pictures.”

Grantaire snorts and gives him a quick, questioning look that makes Enjolras—who was really very sure he was going to get fucked tonight, and who is probably as a result turning every interaction unreasonably sexual in his head—feel leaping delight in his chest and stomach and groin.

He proceeds to sit against a wall opposite what he thinks is probably his favorite piece, or at least a strong member of his top four, _Hong Kong, 2014,_ and watch the other gallery-goers blend into and out of it as they walk by. A woman in the foreground has bumped her neighbor with her protest sign, and the neighbor turns and glares into the faces of the people who pass.

Fucking genius.

When the gallery closes, the gallery-owner invites all interested parties to come on down to an afterparty at the bar down the block. 

Enjolras gratefully accepts Grantaire’s hand up from his place on the gallery floor. 

“Had enough?”

Enjolras finds the very thought offensive. “I want to look at these forever.”

“Enough to _drink_.” Grantaire’s eyes are guarded and very dark.

“Oh.” Enjolras shakes out his shoulders. His arms are pleasantly warm, there’s a little buzziness in his head, but he’s far from drunk. “No.”

“Then let’s get sauced.”

There’s a round of shots at the bar, followed by some kind of booth where once you’re in it’s almost impossible to get out, and Enjolras happens to be the first one to slide in on his side and who should end up sandwiched against him, once they’ve crammed seven jolly people in there, but Grantaire, pressed up against him from knee to shoulder.

Enjolras is wondering why, more by the minute, he hasn’t dedicated his brain before now to the prospect of fucking Grantaire. He’s sexy, he’s skillful, he doesn’t let Enjolras get away with bullshit. Enjolras lets his arm hang along the back of the bench and lets his mind wander.

“They’re brilliant, R,” a woman across the table is saying a drink or two later. Enjolras was introduced when they sat down, but he promptly forgot everyone’s names. He’s pretty sure she’s one of his old classmates. “They’re immersive. They play in such unexpected ways with the macro and the micro levels.”

Grantaire smiles absently over his beer. “Thanks. Hey,” he nudges the guy next to him, “mind if I get out?” The guy and his partner slide out of the bench and Grantaire follows.

“If everyone’s getting up, I guess I might as well,” Enjolras says, although it maybe comes out less precisely-worded than that. The drinks are starting to catch him.

Grantaire, too, is a little unsteady. He grabs for Enjolras’s arm when Enjolras misses his footing on a step, and they lean on each other the rest of the way to the bathroom, laughing. After they’ve pissed, Enjolras looks at himself in the little scratchy mirror above the sinks. He looks tolerable. His hair’s still mostly pulled back, his bright eyes clearer than they by any rights ought to be. He looks like someone Grantaire should want to fuck, right?

He glances to the right in the reflection, toward where Grantaire’s washing his own hands, and, as if in confirmation, Grantaire’s gaze is there, laden and waiting. 

In Enjolras’s brain, there is no intervening time between this and the kissing. One moment, he is recognizing what he sees as the confirmation he sought: Grantaire’s is the look of a person not above fucking you. And the next, his hands are in Grantaire’s hair, making an even wilder mess of it, and his lips are on Grantaire’s lips, and Grantaire is kissing him back.

“Holy fuck,” Grantaire gasps between kisses. Responding in kind to Enjolras’s fierceness has left him short of breath. “Enjolras, you...”

Enjolras crowds him back into the wall. 

Grantaire kisses like Montparnasse, Enjolras is startled to realize—like he’d consume you if he could, like he wants you entirely for his own. But when Grantaire pulls away again, he sees the difference. Grantaire’s eyes are hungry and unfocused, his mouth crushed and wanting. He’s not pulling back to deny Enjolras, how Montparnasse would be, to show once and again who holds the control. He’s denying himself.

“Guess you’re wasted?” he says. 

Enjolras has to agree that he’s at least well on the way. He nudges his knee between Grantaire’s legs and Grantaire full-on gulps. 

“Fuck.” He slides away along the wall to get out of Enjolras’s grip, and Enjolras of course—slowly but definitely acknowledging this as a _no_ —lets go.

Enjolras is sure that he looks comically bereft gazing after Grantaire, who resettles his suit jacket and heads for the bathroom door, but then chances one quick look back at the forlorn man left to seek emotional support in the press of a forearm against the tiled wall.

“Fuuuck,” Grantaire says again, to himself, to the door, then whirls in suddenly-changed decision and strides back toward Enjolras. 

His hand grips the back of Enjolras’s neck and brings their heads together, and he is kissing Enjolras like kissing Enjolras is the stuff of dreams, slow and sweet and intense. 

Then he breaks away. “Wait a minute, okay?” he says, almost in a whisper, and hustles out of the bathroom.

Back at the table, Grantaire answers someone’s questions about brush technique and drying time and meanwhile all Enjolras knows is that the press of Grantaire’s leg to his own is on purpose now. In the weak light, no one will see Enjolras’s hand descend. No one but him will know the reason Grantaire’s voice falters in the middle of the word _chiaroscuro_ , nor that when he brings up pointillist tropes, the unrivalled fingers of his own hand find Enjolras’s on his thigh, and squeeze.

By the time they leave, Enjolras is at seriously reduced capacity for standing upright. This in no way interferes with his desire to give Grantaire a back-seat blow job on their ride, but Grantaire keeps pushing him up and away till finally he leans, sulking, against the far window. 

“Where do you live?” Grantaire asks, then.

The next morning, Enjolras will recall, through the ringing headache, that he refused to give Grantaire his address in hopes that Grantaire would be forced to take him home. 

“You are ridiculously drunk,” Grantaire says. 

Enjolras is not sure why Grantaire keeps bringing this up. It seems rather a low blow.

“And I want you,” he says. “Do you have a problem with that?”

He is not sure why Grantaire looks like this question steals all the breath from his body. “God,” Grantaire says. His face looks like hurt made human. “Jesus.” And he meets Enjolras halfway and lets him kiss him again until the ache in his expression has subsided.

Somehow, despite Enjolras’s extremely persuasive lips, Grantaire seems to have figured out his address and given it to the driver.

Enjolras vaguely remembers Grantaire shouldering him up to the front door. They must have both been horrifically disheveled, rumpled and loose and pink-cheeked, when a tutting Combeferre, apparently expecting them, opened the door to accept the human delivery.

It only now dawns on him that Grantaire knows all his roommates and has been to his house on quite a few occasions before. 

*

**REHEARSE & REPEAT IT**

After a day with no reply to his texts, he checks to make sure he has the right number. The group text seems to think so. One recent exchange:

 **Combeferre:** Mtg tonight, 9p. New polls to share. Who’s in?

 **Cosette:** Me! Bringing snacks

 **Courfeyrac:** Obvs. I have a stack of damning police reports

 **Bahorel:** I got some gutter punks w/ info

 **Grantaire:** I’ll bring the lofty ideals & absolute refusal to compromise

So it’s definitely the right number. But no answer.

He tries again.

 **Enjolras:** I really want to talk to you

No luck.

That afternoon, he asks at the Musain.

“He’s probably on your new rules,” Musichetta says, shrugging.

“Rules?” 

“ _Don’t pick up_?” Jehan says. “They worked for you.”

Once Enjolras figures out what Jehan means, he is outraged.

“That’s entirely different!” he exclaims. “Me and Montparnasse? That was a problem. It went on way too long. Nowhere to turn, except away.”

“Yes,” Jehan says in mild agreement.

There is obviously no synchronicity in these relationships. “Grantaire’s in no danger from me. I didn’t dump him. Hell, I _just_ figured out I’m into him.”

“And when do you think he found out?”

“Probably when I kissed him?”

Jehan gives him as level a look as Jehan’s ever given him; it’s still a little spacey. “How long, Enjolras, has Grantaire known he wants _you_?”

“I don’t know!” Enjolras says in exasperation. “He seemed like he liked it, is all! I liked it. I want to talk to him about it.” He doesn’t say more because the more is too iffy, too embarrassing: _I like guys who are shitty to me; I didn’t know I could like a guy who respects me more than I apparently respect myself._ He doesn’t share that this is revelatory and strange and that it makes his heart quicken because for maybe the first time he is thinking that he might get to peel away someone’s layers and like them better all the way down.

Musichetta and Jehan share a look that Enjolras does not care for. Then Musichetta pulls a bar napkin off the stack and scrawls something.

“That’s him,” she says. Enjolras pockets the address before she can take it back. 

It’s a third-floor apartment. He thinks about calling up at the call-box, but he doesn’t want to risk the possibility that Grantaire won’t buzz him in, so he loiters by the mail slots until someone leaves, maneuvering a double stroller out the door. Enjolras springs over to hold the door wide, and the appreciative parent seems unperturbed when Enjolras goes in.

He knocks at Grantaire’s door. 

Footsteps approach, and a little metal grate in the door opens and through it, he sees Grantaire’s eyes. There’s a faint smell of weed; Grantaire’s eyes are bloodshot and droopy.

“Hell,” he says. “You came.”

“Can I come in?”

“You should leave.”

“Just— No! Why?”

“If I let you in, what are the chances we’re gonna fuck?”

“I can...” Enjolras is terribly muddled. He is not here to push himself on Grantaire, he tries to tell himself, but then remembers the sneakery involved in getting the address, getting inside, and realizes he needs to do better. “I can just come in as ... as friends. We don’t have to do anything.” 

Grantaire snorts. “I can’t be your friend,” he says. “You don’t want a friend. You want sex with me, and I want sex with you, and I am not outfitted with the robust emotional armor I’d need to make that an advisable course of action.”

Enjolras leans against the door. He looks through the iron grate, which is shaped like a tangle of flowers, at Grantaire’s eyes.

“You’re saying you think you want me more than I want you.”

“I am not saying anything of the sort,” Grantaire says, rolling away so that Enjolras can’t see him anymore and instead sees the spartan interior of Grantaire’s little apartment. Dead ahead, there’s a painting in progress, big as a door turned on its side, sketched in pale bluish outlines that look like antique china in the bright afternoon sunlight.

After a minute, though, Grantaire goes on, “Since there’s this door here between us, though. I guess. I guess I have wanted you as long as I’ve known you. In a fundamental, fucking-and-fighting-and-maybe-someday-cuddling type way. So,” he says, his voice wry, “chew on that, and check your conscience. Because if you come in, there’s no way I’m not fucking you.”

Enjolras hears the implication: _Are you cool with Montparnassing this guy? Can you fuck someone knowing they want something real with you, and walk away in the morning?_

But he doesn’t want to walk away.

“Let me in, Grantaire,” he says.

“It’s not locked,” Grantaire says.

“You have to _let_ me in.”

“Are you a fucking vampire?” Grantaire asks, opening the door.

“Tell me everything I know is wrong,” Enjolras says.

“Fuck you,” Grantaire says, staring in disbelief at Enjolras in his home. “You’re like the rightest person I know.”

Grantaire’s bed is a mattress on a low platform at one side of the room; the bulk of the floor-space is dedicated to canvases in various states of completion. In the little kitchen, a press-pot of coffee sits unpressed beside a small steel pipe and lighter.

Grantaire gestures for him to sit; neither of them do. Grantaire’s just standing there, lank and suspicious, wearing jeans that are mostly holes and a football-team tank top with a giant X painted through the team logo and the words SPORTS SUCK painted above and below.

“What would _you_ do, if the guy you were crazy about was looking for a fuck and happened to glance your way?”

“Don’t make me your Montparnasse,” Enjolras says. 

“Why not? Other than that, obviously, one of you is perfect and the other is, pardon me, revolting?”

Enjolras is surprised at the lack of reflected judgment he feels here. Perhaps because of the “perfect.” Why the hell would Grantaire think someone dumb enough to chase after Montparnasse is perfect? 

As if he hears these thoughts, Grantaire says, “I’ve fucked some shitty people in my time. If we weigh everyone on the merits of who they want to bone, most of us come out looking like dog meat.” He shifts backward, bare feet squaring into the floorboards. “You’re my Montparnasse because thinking I could be with you, in pretty much any capacity, sends me straight out of my mind.”

“You _can_ be with me.” Enjolras is trying very hard to figure out how to transition from this talking—which is good, he likes the talking a lot actually, since it keeps making little hoops of flame in his chest whenever Grantaire reminds him that he likes him, because he doesn’t for a second question it now, and that is its own kind of happiness—but god, Grantaire is just standing here, muscled and half-bare and rooted to the middle of the room, looking like a sailor who’s lashed himself to the mast for his own good, and Enjolras is certain he’ll be so much happier if they can just stop talking for a little bit and get to the making out.

“Really?” Grantaire says. His face is at once twisted and alight. 

“But I love your mind.”

With his painted throngs looking on from every side, Grantaire covers the distance between them. _How will he touch him?_ Enjolras feels the anticipation in every part of his body. _Where?_ Grantaire settles on a fistful of Enjolras’s shirt. Almost there. Not quite.

“I wasn’t supposed to let you in.”

Enjolras doesn’t say anything. Somehow, he thinks, he’s not supposed to. He moved on Grantaire once; let this time go the way Grantaire decides. 

Grantaire’s hands slide up under Enjolras’s shirt, over the obliques and ribs and up to the collarbone. The hard calluses scratch his skin. Then his shirt’s lifting off, over his head.

Grantaire takes a step away to look at him.

“Funny how we want someone and we don’t even know... Don’t even know what it _is_ we’re wanting.”

This seems like as good a time as any to unbuckle his belt. Enjolras does so, and undoes the button of his slacks. 

Grantaire takes another step back, which is maybe not exactly how Enjolras hoped this would go, but he can roll with it.

Grantaire waves his hand in a “keep-going” type of way. “Yeah, let’s see it.” 

So in a minute, Enjolras is standing fully naked in the brilliant light of Grantaire’s many-windowed apartment, holding still, being scrutinized. 

“Well?” he inquires finally, because he really didn’t expect Grantaire to survey him from quite such a thorough range of angles.

Grantaire laughs. “I’m going to paint this one million times, and none of them are going to come out right.” He pulls off his own shirt and unbuttons the jeans, sending them to the floor. 

He kisses Enjolras slowly and determinedly, as though this first kiss is a declaration.

After that, though, Enjolras’s hands find respite from their useless dangling and clutch Grantaire’s biceps, and the feel of Grantaire’s solid muscles in his hands makes him go hard, which has similar effect upon Grantaire, and Grantaire flings him onto the bed.

Enjolras sucks at the side of Grantaire’s throat as they grind against each other. Grantaire is moaning, with words that are just loud enough to hear through the gasps. “I don’t care. If this is all it is. It’s worth it. It’s so fucking worth it.”

“It’s not,” Enjolras breathes against his neck. He knows Grantaire doesn’t believe it. Grantaire touches him with wonder, like this is his one chance, still, to know the raised bone of Enjolras’s hip, the rounded swell of his ass, the untidy mess of his hair. 

And he likes it. He likes being revered, being wanted, knowing that all those blisteringly-memorable arguments and challenges really were about belief in him. He wants to tell Grantaire that he believes, too. I believe you are worth too much to like me this much.

He’s never before let himself be with someone who adores him. It always seemed like it would feel unequal.

He never knew he would want, just as desperately, to see the satisfaction someone else takes in getting to have him.

Enjolras likes thinking about Grantaire watching him, observing him, as they bend around and into each other. Enjolras takes him into his mouth and lets his eyes close so that Grantaire can watch him without being watched—partly for Grantaire, and partly because imagining Grantaire’s eyes on him makes him want to thrust against the sheets. His hand wraps in the thick coarse curls at the base of Grantaire’s substantial cock. When it’s filling his mouth, he can tell Grantaire’s shuddering with the effort not to fuck up into him. He presses his tongue flat against the underside, and Grantaire can’t hold back a little jolt of his hips, and oh, Enjolras likes that breach of control. He grunts with pleasure. 

“I’m not coming in your mouth,” Grantaire croaks, dragging him back up his body. “Not if I can...”

He rolls them onto their sides, so that Enjolras’s cock is rubbing against Grantaire’s, which is wet and hot from Enjolras’s mouth.

Then Grantaire’s tongue is in his mouth, and his cock is fucking alongside Enjolras’s. Enjolras is so glad. He wants to feel Grantaire’s body against his, every part of it. He wants to feel the moment the build-up becomes inexorable, when their stutter-stop rhythm unites. 

“God, yes,” Enjolras cries out. Grantaire’s forehead presses against his; his eyes are open and darkly near, his breath and Enjolras’s sharing communal space. He loves that Grantaire likes him this much—so damn much—even though, or maybe, could it be _because_? he’s such a disaster at finding love. Grantaire wants his intricacies. He gets them. He knows Enjolras is deeply flawed, and he’s not lying when he calls him perfect. “Fuck, Grantaire,” his hands pulling Grantaire’s tensing ass impossible millimeters closer with every muscle movement, “I want you. I want you. I want _you_ , Grantaire.”

The sound that escapes Grantaire is less like a sob than like a thunderclap of laughter. With that laugh, he slides between them with such force and urgency that, despite the entire lack of penetration, Enjolras’s insides are all pulsing with it, and his cock is pulsing so magnificently in the sudden burst of come that it’s almost a surprise a moment later when Enjolras, frantically kissing and being kissed anywhere he can reach, comes too.

They don’t move for a while, except that Grantaire rolls onto his back and tentatively pulls Enjolras into the crook of his shoulder. Enjolras spreads out onto him and listens to Grantaire’s breath settle below him through the clamorous cage of his ribs. Eventually he falls asleep. Maybe Grantaire does, too, but when Enjolras wakes up, it’s dark out and Grantaire is painting.

For a while, he just watches. Grantaire’s back in his jeans but no shirt; the muscles in his back bunch and elongate as he mixes a green to fill a patch of sky, adds dabs of amber and cerise. It’s neither methodical nor slapdash; it’s the spontaneous expression of a lifetime of observation and practice. He hasn’t seen other painters paint, but he’s sure that Grantaire’s approach is like nobody else. 

_This_ guy, he tells himself again, still incredulous, goes crazy for _him_. 

“Still here?” Grantaire asks, when he sets down his paints to stretch out his arms. It doesn’t sound like he expected otherwise, and yet it’s a little stab inside Enjolras to hear him give words to the doubt, and a fiercer stab of joy in his gut because he is pretty damn sure he is going to make Grantaire happy.

“Can I order us some dinner?” Enjolras says.

“Don’t feel like you have to—”

“I want to wake up in your bed in the morning,” Enjolras says. “Don’t tell me what I don’t have to do.”

Grantaire leans back on his heels, appraising the man in his bed. “I’m not gonna get over you.” It could be a caution for Enjolras, or for himself. Maybe it’s just a statement of truth.

“Don’t,” says Enjolras.

**Author's Note:**

> Belatedly, dear friends, this is for you.


End file.
